Unidentified

Titles on Marvin Kendrick’s photographic art do not exist. The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute group gathered for their gallery showing’s opening reception of his works and a Q and A with the artist. He explained that he didn’t want to limit perception with his own ideas since he’d rather leave his photographs for the viewer to interpret the tale told by the picture. As I looked around the room, I liked that idea since I could see room for a story behind each of his pictures.

He is allowing OLLI to choose one for permanent display. That may be the hard part with beauty in each photograph, especially since he has left the door open for personal story interpretations. With the live wires at OLLI, I’m sure there will be strong preferences among the members of the Art Committee.

I’ll jump in right away with my choice, not that it counts for anything, and the story it told me. This photo was taken in New Brunswick, Canada along the shore of the Bay of Fundy. I saw a rock that dared to be different. Of course, it stood out with the background of all the blues that made its orange seem even more intense. Oddly, the orange made the blues more intense as well. (To prove my point, cover the orange rock and just look at the blues.)

Within the range of its influence, a couple of smaller rocks seem to be taking on the hue. Are they gaining courage to become who they really are instead of reflecting the crowd around them? Before we lose interest in the crowd, it’s their very similarity that makes the orange rock pop. And even as their similar color makes them fit together overall, they also have their differences. A bit of time will reward the viewer with the unique that lies even in the members of the crowd who seem so similar at first glance.

When it comes to any form of art, I’m the little dark blue one in the middle bottom. I like to think that my appreciation makes the orange ones like Marvin shine a little brighter.

Salt Houses

In Palestine, Salma reads her daughter’s coffee dregs on the eve of her wedding, but only tells Alia part of what she foresees. The rest she will find out soon enough. Salt Houses, Hala Alyan’s debut novel, covers three family generations.

The first uprooting and loss comes with the Six Day War of 1967. The book follows the family through a series of relatively peaceful times intercepted by war for the next fifty years. Bit by bit and war by war, the family scatters to Kuwait City, Beirut, Paris, and Boston with different levels and approaches to how much they assimilate into their new cultures and how much they hold onto the old values and traditions.  

She describes the war times – electricity cutting out every few hours, adults forbidding children to leave the house or even to go out on the balcony, men yelling at the television when it was on and shaking their heads, news reports with streaks of smoke from the airport, and planes dropping bombs “like eggs from their abdomens.”

In between, life resembles a normal pull and tug as children grow up wanting to stretch their wings and throw off old restrictions, as parents worry and disagree on how to handle the young ones, and as grandmother recalls the old ways or helps the young ones circumvent the rules. Normality lasts only until the next conflict.

The theme of the book is in a paragraph near the end. “What they say never changes. There is a war Alia knows. She understands this intuitively; in fact, it seems to her the only truth she holds immutable. There is a war. It is being fought and people are losing, though she is uncertain who exactly.”

Salt Houses sheds light on a question I’ve often asked when I’ve seen those reports of wars that seem interminable, “How do people live in that kind of atmosphere?” and puts a human face on what seems far away and can be forgotten once the newscast goes off.

Speechless

Laryngitis, about the only thing with the power, has rendered me speechless. Like many other things, it has also brought memories of one of Daddy’s favorite jokes.

A customer comes into the ice cream shop and requests a cone of ice cream. The girl behind the counter rasps, “What would you like? We have chocolate, vanilla, and Karo pecan.”

The customer asks, “Do you have laryngitis?”

“No,” the girl answers, “Just chocolate, vanilla, and Karo pecan.”

We heard the joke every time we got laryngitis growing up. I heard it the most often since I end every illness with a round. In fact, Daddy used to say if I broke my toe, the last part of the healing would be a case of laryngitis. But he didn’t just save the gag for us.

Once he was traveling back with a friend to the seminary when he was recovering from a bout of his own. The friend sympathized with his losing his voice, which was equally as painful to him as it is to me, and Daddy told him the yarn.

His friend remarked that Daddy made jokes about everything and he fully expected him to rise up and tell a few at his own funeral.* The friend finished with the proverb, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”

Daddy retorted, “Are you calling me a pill?”

*Daddy didn’t rise up and tell jokes at his funeral, but those who came to the visitation brought their favorites from his collection to share.

The Artist's Sketch

Should you have a need for a coffee table book with a fascinating story and beautiful paintings, I have a recommendation. The Artist’s Sketch by Carolyn Brown sheds light on an artist who was known in an entirely different way in Holly Springs, Mississippi, where I graduated from high school. Teenagers whispered about “the cat lady” as they passed the overgrown yard of Kate Freeman Clark. Neither kids nor adults at that time had any idea of the treasure she had created that was stored in New York until her death.

Carolyn’s research uncovered a child of privilege in a small Southern town. Her lawyer father, elected to the Senate while they were living in Vicksburg, traveled to Washington but turned ill and died before Kate and her mother could join him. Mother and daughter returned home to Holly Springs and for the next eight years lived with her grandmother, Mama Kate, for whom she was named and who took her in hand to produce a genteel young woman. 

Moving to New York with her mother, Kate began a life in art, studying the plein air technique and shining as one of its finest practitioners. They spent time in the New York and its surroundings and in DC and were eventually joined by Mama Kate. She seldom did official shows since her mother thought that was unseemly for a young woman, and signed her paintings “Freeman Clark,” perhaps for the same reason. She did enjoy her companions and mentors in the art community and a bit of romance.

First her grandmother and then her mother took ill, and after their deaths, she moved back to Holly Springs where she lived for the last quarter century of her life. She gave a few art talks and participated in the life of the ante-bellum Southern town before becoming the reclusive “cat lady” with the overrun yard.

Only after her death and the reading of her will did local people learn of her immense talent. Her paintings, warehoused in New York, were left to the city of Holly Springs. In addition to her fascinating story, the book contains a wealth of photographs of her art. And if you’re like me, it will inspire a desire to return to Holly Springs to see them in person in the Kate Freeman Clark Art Gallery.

Gotta Call It Something

As Al marks another anniversary of his birth on the day of my blog, it seemed only right to do honor to who he is.

I’ve been searching for the right description. I’ve seen many people classify their spouse or significant other as their “best friend.” Well, that seems a bit warm and fuzzy for a loveable curmudgeon.  While it’s true that I confide in Al and tell him stuff I wouldn’t tell anybody else, “best friend” seems a little off.

Then there’s “soulmate” which kind of insinuates way more agreement than we’ve been able to achieve. That proverbial glass that he sees half-empty always looks half-full to me. Not to mention our method of leaving a gathering to come home when he can be out the door and have the car cranked within thirty seconds, and I’m prone to linger and chat until everybody goes home. And when we ride together to the voting precinct, he turns right while I turn left.

So does this relationship leave me in bad shape? Hardly. Even before he heard the Army slogan, he applied the “Be all you can be” to me. As a very poor typist before the days of computers, I had two years left on an English degree when we married. I worked ahead, handwriting all my papers, and left them with him for typing while I commuted to Ole Miss. He typed in breaks (72 words a minute with no mistakes on a manual typewriter) while he ran the family country store, kept my gas tank filled, and paid my tuition. Mama said my degree should have read “Mr. and Mrs.”

Several years later when I decided to take enough classes to get certification to teach kindergarten and elementary school, he insisted that I reach a bit farther and get my Master’s in Early Childhood Education. The day that diploma came, after I had to take my comprehensive in Germany and have it mailed, he asked, “So when do you start your doctorate?” I assured him I was through filling in squares. He still chides me about that decision since I’ve taken enough additional hours to have completed one.

A major requirement when we bought our house in Hattiesburg was a big kitchen since we both cook. He has a system for that, too. If I cook, he cleans up. If he cooks, he cleans up. It works for me.

And there’s my writing. Always my first reader, he apologizes if he finds anything wrong or unclear. (I’m thinking, “Like why did I give it to you to read if I didn’t want you to spot a problem?”) He is sure the only reason I ever get a rejection letter is because they didn’t read the submission. He usually proofs my blogs, too, but in case there’s a mistake, I didn’t let him see this one ahead.

So what label do I give him today on his birthday? Beats me. I had given up on finding him a label when I overheard some words of wisdom as we passed Chick-fil-a on our daily walk in the mall.  Devon Dollar said, “Sometimes things just work out the way they should.”

Happy birthday to the guy who’s helped make most of my life work out the way it should.

The Radium Girls

Be forewarned. The Radium Girls by Kate Moore is both repulsive and compelling – like a scab not quite ready to come off. Once started, the reader is drawn back again and again to read what she’d rather not know. The publisher fittingly describes it as “The dark story of America’s Shining Women.” Unfortunately, it is nonfiction.

Set during the time of World War I, young women get a dream job of painting numbers on clock faces with radium to make them glow in the dark, first for the military and later for public use. As early as 1901, scientists knew the dangers inherent in radium. This account begins in 1917 when those dangers were being ignored and denied. To make their brushes produce exact tiny lines, the “Radium Girls” dipped the brushes into their mouths to make the points sharper. Bits and pieces of the substance fell onto their clothes or parts of their body, making them glow eerily and beautifully in the dark. For a time, the ingredient enhanced the girls’ beauty for party going as they sometimes added extra touches of leftovers here and there. All was well until, one by one they began to get sick.

The radium attacked their bones and teeth. The company denied all charges that radium was the cause. Intrigue, lawsuits, and lies filled the days as the young women sought justice. In a saga that stretched to 1938 with one step forward followed by two steps backward, the Radium Girls pursued the truth. The impact of their battle reaches forward into safety procedures that protect our world today.

I highly recommend this book and think I see the prospects of a movie inherent in its story.   

#33 - Who Knew?

An AARP Bulletin recently proposed fifty ways to enhance health and lengthen life.  Some fell into the category of “Why would you want to live longer if you had to do that?” Things like eating less, giving up sugar, or moving to California lacked appeal to me. Some gave me an excuse for habits I already hold – drinking that extra cup of coffee, reading, and staying married. 

None held a candle to # 33. They conceded that having responsibility for grandchildren every day might be stressful. On the other hand, they suggested that being with grandchildren on a regular basis could lower your risk of dying by a third and add up to five years of life. The researchers speculate that caring for grandchildren gives the grandparent purpose and keeps them mentally and physically active. In the next issue, Lillian Carson, author of The Essential Grandparent, says being with the younger generation literally beefs up the immune system.

On an April 3, 2017 segment of CBS Morning Show, Leslie Stahl said this regular relationship benefitted the grandchildren as well. A vague reference to studies she’d read said children with grandparents were more confident, were not as troublesome at school, and were more rooted in family history. (This could be because grandchildren show interest in the family stories that brought on eye-rolling in their parents.)

We are blessed with ten, yes that’s 10, grandchildren (all brilliant, polite, and hardworking). Until this past August, all of them lived far away – Arizona, Texas, and Maryland. As military brats, our children who are now their parents had traveled long distances to visit their grandparents once or twice a year – or longer if we were out of the country. This lifestyle evidently seemed normal to them.

I’m not even going to guess how many of these helpful statistics our youngest son and his wife knew when they made the decision to move here to Hattiesburg last August. Nor am I going to guarantee than any of these positive outcomes will happen. But I will attest that life is a lot more fun when you see grandchildren more times in a week than you used to see them in a year!

I saw a Facebook meme shortly after I learned all of this. It said, “Grandparents don’t babysit. They have playdates.” I think that’s about right.

Beartown

I was introduced to the work of Fredrik Backman by a surprise delivery of A Man Called Ove from our daughter who had seen a strong resemblance between Ove and her father and thought her parents should read the book. That touched off one of those word-of-mouth promotions that soon had a number of people in my church entranced with Ove, a showing of the movie in fellowship hall, and an ongoing watch among these friendly bookreaders for the next Backman work. Imagine my delight when Net Galley offered his newest novel called Beartown as an ARC and my even greater delight when the publisher accepted my request to read!

My first revelation involved gaining understanding that in some communities ice hockey can rule the public psyche as much as football does here in the South. The beginning of chapter 16 reflects the theme of the book, “Pride in a team can come from a variety of causes. Pride in a place, or a community, or just a single person. We devote ourselves to sports because they remind us of how small we are just as much as they make us bigger.”

To be up front, since I can’t leave out things that bother me, I almost stopped reading about a third of the way through in chapter 17 when there is a series of pointless lesbian jokes. I am offended when any group of people is held up to ridicule since I live with an understanding that people who are in some way different from me are still my fellow travelers on the road of life. I have some understanding that Backman was characterizing the people who were making the offensive jokes, but still.

The real challenge for Beartown arises when the star hockey player rapes a young girl in a drunken after-party. Personal reactions of community members follow – the coaches and fans, the girl’s parents, the perpetrator and victim, their friends, and the outside onlookers. Like A Man Called Ove, the book gets more riveting as it goes along with the reader wondering if anything good can come of this dreadful situation.

I’ll not spoil the ending except to say, I’m glad I didn’t stop at chapter seventeen.

Look Again

There’s a line from The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett about “life looking different depending on where you were standing” that seems to apply at my parents’ first meeting. Appropriately enough considering their future together, my parents met on a Sunday at Sturgis Baptist Church. (Not the famous Sturgis in South Dakota where they have the motorcycle races – the village in Mississippi that few people have ever heard of) 

Daddy had come to church with pseudo-cousins and was immediately smitten. Whether it was love at first sight, he never said, but he told his cousins over Sunday dinner that he had just met the girl he was going to marry. 

Mama must have been standing in a different place. She also had a comment at Sunday dinner around the long table with her parents and five brothers and sisters. “I just met the ugliest man I’ve ever seen.” Before you get disturbed at what this did to Daddy’s ego, he is the one who told this story the most often and laughed the loudest at the punch line. I think he took it as a personal triumph that he won her over. 

In the unbiased view of his oldest daughter, I would say he was neither handsome nor ugly but had a distinctive look. His abundant hair, that never grayed or turned loose in his seventy years, had a deep reverse “V” on either side like an extended widow’s peak, his tie was crooked in every picture he ever took even after he and Mama married, and his eyeglasses were ever-present. Mama evidently took a second look from a better angle and changed her mind.

Eighty years ago, on this date, they “slipped off” to get married at their pastor’s home. They were twenty-six and twenty-four years old, doing a quiet wedding in consideration for my grandmother who was already dealing with health concerns that would take her life the next year. They returned immediately after the wedding to my grandfather’s place to announce the good news. Mama’s eight-year-old sister ran into the house to tell my grandfather. “Daddy, you’ve got a new son-in-law and a preacher, too!”

Their marriage, like all the other marriages I know much about, was not perfect, but it lasted until Daddy’s death forty-five years later. In many ways, they were complementary opposites. In one of the most important ways for the longevity of the marriage and the life they needed to live, Mama’s steadying influence on Daddy was balanced by the humor he uncovered in whatever life handed out. 

I’m pretty sure my three sisters and my parents’ eight grandchildren join me in being glad that Daddy had a clear view through his glasses and that Mama took another look. Maybe even the thirteen great-grandchildren who didn’t know them are grateful. They have heard the family stories!

Liver and Onions

There are only two ways to look at this dish, I think, beginning with the family into which I was born. You love it or you hate it. Daddy and I loved it. Mama and the other three girls hated it. Mama’s prejudice was so strong she could barely stand to be in the room where it was cooked.

Country church members knew how much Daddy liked the dish and saved him a share of the liver when they killed hogs. Naturally, it was one of the first dishes I learned to cook when I was about nine years old. Daddy and I savored the deliciousness while Mama and the girls were stuck with a piece of ham or some sausage to go with their mashed potatoes and vegetables.

Moving forward to the days when I was grown and stayed with my parents while Al finished basic training, we came to a day when Mama had an all-day meeting. Daddy had seen fresh liver in the grocery store and planned a treat. He answered a knock at the door in the living room as I sliced the onions in the kitchen. I heard his fellow pastor say, “I can’t stay long. I have some errands to run.”

Thinking Daddy would be through in plenty of time for lunch, I went right ahead braising the liver and paring potatoes. I enjoyed the preparation and the aroma, anticipating sharing the dish with a fellow liver aficionado with no disparaging remarks from Mama or my sisters. Daddy’s visitor lingered and lingered.

Finally, not wanting my treat spoiled, I went into the living room and said, “Brother Benefield, we’re having liver and onions for lunch. Would you like to join us?”

 He said, “I smelled them. I was waiting, hoping you were going to ask.”

When Mama’s Alzheimer’s Disease required her to move into a care facility, we passed along what she had always told us – she would eat anything but liver. When it was on the menu, they carefully prepared something else for her. We knew the disease had taken her memory when one of the caregivers apologized one day that she had been given liver by mistake. She had eaten it without comment.

The picture for this blog comes from the public domain and, unfortunately, is not mine since I no longer cook it but looks much like mine. We’ve given it up. Shortly after I convinced husband Al that liver and onions was a treat, somebody discovered that it also raised cholesterol significantly. And just when we thought it was good for us!

The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas seemed a bit in awe as she told her own publication story to the attendees of the Louisiana/Mississippi SCBWI JambalayaKidLit Conference. Being proactive with coincidence took her to a “right place – right time” cliché. She asked a question on an agent’s twitter query site about a book she had begun as a college writing project. “Would there be an interest in a book about a girl caught in a community where she had personal relationships with both the police and the Black Lives Matter neighborhood?" The agent invited her to send the manuscript which he then sold at auction. Two years later, The Hate U Give has spent weeks on the New York Times young adult best seller list.

Our Louisiana/Mississippi group had already booked Angie for our conference in March before she became quite so famous. Our regional advisor interviewed her for the afternoon general session. She began, “I’m not sure what to do here. I’ve never interviewed a New York Times best seller before.”

Angie had a quick comeback. “That’s okay. I’ve never been a New York Times best seller before.”

Having set the tone for the interview, the writers and wannabe writers were drawn into the conversation that told of Angie’s own struggles, much like her protagonist, living in the community with her black neighbors and attending school in an elite, predominantly white, college. She emphasized that her novel did not make either the police or the Black Lives Matter proponents into the bad guys or good guys. As you might imagine, she signed a number of books bought after her presentation – including mine.

Angie obviously doesn’t need my help in promoting this debut novel. I found it to be all she had said with a protagonist torn between people in her two worlds that she genuinely cares about. The book is a hard read both from the language and the situations, but they are necessary to the story rather than gratuitous. I found myself using context for some of the authentic street language much like I used to do as a child when the books I chose contained vocabulary over my head.

The book will appeal to young adult readers – just ask the New York Times. It will also give insight to those who are looking for a just solution to the problems between the police and the Black community.     

Treasure Hunting on Earth Day

If the old saying, “You never have to go to work if you love your job,” is true, USM Associate Professor of Biology Mac Alford hasn’t worked in a while. In addition to the job for which he is paid, he took a group of retired members of an OLLI class on a field trip to look for wildflowers this week. Every few steps through the woodland trail, he would exclaim, “Oh, and look at this!” Becoming the girl who walked the trails at Papaw’s farm, I joined his enthusiasm.

We saw things I recognized like honeysuckle, wild phlox, and violets. Milkweed blossomed, waiting for visits from the Monarch butterflies. A young native longleaf pine stuck its bristles up, looking for all the world like a green feather duster, the beginnings of a trunk forming its handle. Then there was the carnivorous sundew. It’s pretty flower with a nice aroma attracts insects who come too close to the sticky leaves and give up their lives for the cause. In the wonder of second childhoods, the group of seniors followed the professor from discovery to discovery.

He answered questions as we went along including why that ubiquitous vine that I hate in my yard grows everywhere. I have puzzled over how it proliferates hither and yon beyond the huge tuber that must be dug to get rid of it. He said it has clusters of berries that birds love to eat which means they spread the seeds far and wide. He was only stumped by why my pyracantha bush will bloom but not produce berries. (No, it doesn’t have male and female bushes. Try another answer.)

This trip seemed just right to prepare for Earth Day tomorrow. I’m going to follow up in my yard by finding small wonders to celebrate. I invite you to join me in a virtual search and tell me what you discover.

Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel

Husband Al knew he wouldn’t have to ask twice. He saw Lemuria Books in Jackson on Kimberly Willis Holt’s travel schedule and asked, “Do you want to go?” With a collection of her books that goes back to when I met her almost twenty years ago in her early writing years, he knew I would want the latest. Her new book, Blooming at the Texas Sunrise Motel, displaced books-to-be-read at the top of my stack even before I found both a normal and an unusual connection to its protagonist.

The reader gets a hint of estrangement from the beginning, “My name, Stevie Grace, was tattooed inside a giant sun on my dad’s back.” With the tattoo and the back-to-nature lifestyle lived in an abandoned church outside Taos, New Mexico, Stevie’s parents don’t fit expectations for a daughter of a conservative Texas family. Stevie remains unaware of the problem, since her parents have cut ties with home, until she is suddenly left an orphan.

Stevie Grace must go live with a grandfather she has never met in a rundown motel in Little Esther, Texas. The unusual inhabitants of the motel take a shine to her sooner than her grandfather. He holds on to some mysterious grudge that her parents had also kept secret.

Like many of her books, this one draws on Kimberly’s heritage of her grandfather’s nurseries in Forest Hill, Louisiana and her longtime residence in Texas. An important story line follows Stevie’s efforts to beautify the motel with plants out front. Her progress in dealing with her grief and finding her place in this new world are foreshadowed by the divisions of the book – Seedling, Cultivate, Sow, Transplant, and Blooming. This good read now joins its companions on my special KWH shelf.

Not to forget my links to Stevie, the usual one is a love for growing things with normal successes and failures. The unusual connection is that we both had a grandmother we never met named “Dovie.” Both her grandmother and mine (in the picture) left legacies that have influenced our lives even without their physical presence.

Daniel Finds a Poem

Just in time for poetry month, Micha Archer won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award at the Kaigler Children’s Book Festival for her book Daniel Finds a Poem. The story follows a little boy as he tries to find a definition of poetry.

Daniel’s interest is peaked by a sign on the park gate advertising “Poetry in the Park – Sunday at 6 o’clock.” He wants to know what poetry is so he can be ready for next week’s event. As he goes through each day of the week, he asks a different animal and gets a different perspective from each one. It’s not a spoiler to tell you ahead of time that he comes up with his own perfect poem to share and a way to observe poems everywhere he goes. The text encourages the preschool listener and the adult who reads aloud to be on the lookout for poetry in the world around them.

I was as intrigued with the illustrations as with the text since Micha is both author and illustrator. Early on, I felt something familiar – a little boy in a neighborhood exploring nature, beautiful collage artwork, the wonder of childhood. Then I turned the page and saw Daniel in bed looking forward to a new day. I knew the connection I was trying to make.

Micha confirmed my discovery when I talked to her at the festival. Like several illustrators at the festival, she acknowledged the artist who had gone before her and served as her inspiration. Her collage and view of childhood is reminiscent of Ezra Jack Keats.

The picture of Daniel greeting the morning is a tribute to Keats with a flipped arrangement of Peter in The Snowy Day, yet it is distinctly her own. Possibilities for sharing this book with children abound – the story, the day of the week sequence, and following Daniel’s example by looking for poetry in the natural world. But I think my favorite will be sitting with a couple of preschoolers with the two books spread together looking for likenesses and differences in the works of Keats and Archer! 

Rooting for Rafael Rosales

What could a young Dominican baseball fan have in common with an American daughter of an executive of a large corporation?

Rafael’s story is told over time beginning with the first chapter “Rafael, Many Years Ago” and following his goal of making a major-league baseball team in the United States. He and many of his peers see this as a way out of poverty. In the early days, he rescues a girl’s chicken, a girl who lives in destitution greater than his own.

Maya’s story begins in the present day during Rafael’s first year in the minor leagues. Her activism to save the bees in the environment runs afoul of the pesticide manufactured by her father’s company. Her fondness for plants loved by bees like thistles and dandelions that her sister calls “weeds” triggers her explanation, “A weed is a plant you don’t want. I want these, so they aren’t weeds.” Her love of baseball and a post on her sister’s blog lead to a friendship with the girl named Bijou who owned the rescued chicken and a link to Rafael.

The difficulty of life in the Dominican Republic and cautionary practices as Rafael pursues his baseball dream contrast with the affluence and moral dilemma for Maya as she decides how far to take her passion when her father’s job is at stake. I found the move back and forth between the two characters easy enough, but was a bit disconcerted for a while by the time with Rafael’s taking place over years while Maya’s stayed in the present.

Ultimately, there is a secret both Rafael and Maya share that could wreak havoc in the lives of people they care about. Right and wrong are not as clear as they should be. This is a good middle grade read with a nice window into the world of aspiring baseball players common to the Dominican Republic.

Whoa, Muley!

Cleaning through old folders is not an efficient task. An unexpected stack of school pictures took me back to the hair business that symbolized my ambivalent relationship with Mama. I was relieved when she stopped struggling with my hair. The stuff grew prolifically on my head, fine and board straight. If I had only been a 70s child, I would never have had to use an ironing board.

Mama had completely given up on my hair by the time I started to school. She let it grow and put it into pigtails. School pictures show braids meeting on top of my head from each side with back hair hanging down in my first grade picture. Each year, the school pictures showed longer braids. As my hair grew, she turned the pigtails into an asset with ribbons to match my dresses and several ways to put them up that were pretty and different. I willingly sat for her to put my hair in French braids for special occasions. After the braids grew really long, she sometimes looped them up and put the ribbon at the top. Once a girl handed down to me a rather nondescript white eyelet dress with buttons down the front. Mama added bone crochet loops on either side of the buttons and tied each pair together with three colors of narrow ribbon. Then she put the same colors of ribbons on my braids. It was ever so much sharper than the original. By the time I was ten, I plaited the everyday pigtails myself.

A point of pride was that only one other girl about a year older than I was who sometimes visited our community had braids as long. I didn’t even care when the boys took hold of the pigtails and gave a gentle pull, calling, “Whoa, Muley!” It was all in fun. I could have done without the nickname Muley, however, which stuck for a while.

Our bone of contention was not the braids but the bangs. Mama insisted on cutting them straight across just above my eyebrows. When my hair was neatly combed, they provided a nice balance to the long braids hanging behind and covered a rather high forehead. The problem was the bangs seldom hung down. Mississippi heat seemed almost year-round. You may have heard that Southern girls glow or perspire in the heat. Not me. I sweated profusely. I pushed hair that dripped sweat into my eyes straight up. After third grade, all but one of my school pictures shows bangs pushed up, up, and away.

On the whole, my pigtails made me feel special and kept Mama from trying to put one of those foul-smelling permanents in my hair. Mama must have liked them, too, since the next folder I open has the braids, preserved when they were cut in seventh grade with rubber bands on each end.

Mercies in Disguise

The question threading its way through the narrative nonfiction book, Mercies in Disguise, by Gina Kolata is one I’ve pondered before. If a hereditary degenerative disease showed up often in your family and you could be tested to see if you carried the gene, would you have the test?  

This story of the Baxter family exemplifies the odds of a fifty/fifty chance of having a gene for a disease that steals both body and mind slowly and ends in death. The frame is Amanda’s choice. It begins as she waits to hear the results of her test before going on to the backstory, and ends with the phone call and her response to it.

Irony lies in the fact that the Baxter family is filled with doctors. By chance, they begin to notice a similarity in family deaths that are attributed to Parkinson’s and other degenerative diseases. Once they realize the commonality of the rare disease, they are able to establish that it has been passed from one generation to the next, often receiving various labels since doctors themselves are not aware of the disease. In their bafflement, they label the sickness with the closest equivalent in their knowledge base.

Rogue scientists fill in a parallel story along with that of the family. They have the correct label, discover the gene marker, and find a test for it. As expected, family members differ in whether to test or not to test, sometimes finding a conflict between the possibilities of science and reliance on their faith.

This true story reads like a mystery novel with page-turning urgency. I found myself sympathizing with those who wanted to know and take every opportunity afforded by science and with those who wanted to live life with a faith that assumed they were in the fifty percent clear of the gene. Following Amanda feels like following the protagonist of an intriguing novel with the added urgency of knowing her story is true.

As for the question of whether I would want to know, I’m still pondering.

Lazarus, Come Forth!

Rewriting Daddy’s old pun of “When the Lord told Noah to gopher wood, what kind of wood did he tell him to gopher?” takes me to “When OLLI members take a trip to gopher a lesson on endangered frogs, what kind of frogs do they gopher?”

We gathered at the Nature Conversancy building on the edge of Camp Shelby where the agents work closely with the Army in a way that augments the military mission while conserving species that have been endangered by loss of longleaf pine habitat. One of these is the dusky gopher frog.

Lest you think I’m through with nonsense vaguely related to the Bible, the dusky gopher frog we observed was named Lazarus. Already interested in this species, I hovered over his home before the presentation started. I saw his name on the glass and finally found him crouched under the white moss. I tried calling, “Lazarus, come forth!” with no results.

I didn’t have long to wait. The agent pulled Lazarus out of his home, gave instructions on how to hold him, and passed him around to those of us who wanted a closer relationship. He explained that one of their missions is growing the frogs which were down to one population area. The grown frogs are released back into natural habitats.

The agent told us the frog’s story and the reason for his name. He had appeared to be dead and came back to life. Lazarus, indeed. While they normally liberate to the environment the frogs they grow from eggs through tadpoles to adults, this one will remain with them. Their excuse is using him for public education. He certainly fits that bill, but I think they’re keeping him because they just like him.

By coincidence, I came home and started work on the Sunday school lesson I will teach this Sunday. It’s the story of Lazarus. I’m not sure how I’m going to work a dusky gopher frog into the story, but I’ll bet I find a way.

The Book that Made Me

Thirty-one authors with essays on the books that made them who they are sounded too enticing to pass up. The Book that Made Me with these essays collected by children’s literature expert Judith Ridge was published first in September in Australia and this month by Candlewick in America. While the writer names from New Zealand and Australia were largely unfamiliar to me, their ideas and passions rang a recognizable tune. 

The concept was for the authors to name the one book that was the greatest inspiration in their life or their work. James Roy summarizes the theme in his essay, “Everyone knows that often the best books are the ones that speak to us, the ones we truly relate to. The ones that make us go, ‘I know that feeling.’ ”

As you might guess with thirty-one writers, variety ensued. Some seemed not to understand the concept of one book and gave a list. Some leaned more to what formed them as writers and some to how the book(s) had changed them as people. One cited oral lore from the Palyku people of western Australia rather than a book. One leads into a long paragraph of general parenting advice.

Writers got these cherished childhood books from a variety of places – their library, their family bookshelves, or as gifts. One was pretty sure she stole hers. Expected titles of Chronicles of Narnia, a variety of Dr. Seuss titles, Nancy Drew, and The Book Thief were interspersed with Australian and New Zealand titles unknown to me.

Shaun Tan’s cartoons threading their way through the book along with photographs of the authors in their youth added fun and charm. I enjoyed comparing their choices and the ways they were influenced with my own relationships with books. (In case you are wondering, I would have chosen Little Women.)

I would agree with a line from Ambelin Kwaymullina’s essay, and I think those writers would, too. “Every story matters, and we all have the power to influence the future.”  

Berry Good

I thought I’d heard all the stories. My 88-year-old Aunt Ruth pulled me aside to look at the picture of the family home where she grew up and where all the family gatherings were held. “You remember Grandma Berry?”

Of course, I did. Until she died when I was fifteen, one stop of any part of a trip to my grandfather’s house was to pay homage to her. We would find this long-widowed grandmother in the home of one of her children or grandchildren as they passed her around. Dressed in modest high-necked dresses with sleeves at least three-quarter length, she lived an uncomfortable life in the Mississippi heat where some of her granddaughters ran around in short shorts. A small person, now stooped even further with osteoporosis, I remembered her mostly as old. Mama never failed to tell me I should have known her when she was younger.

Aunt Ruth pointed to the porch in the picture. “When I was engaged and brought your Uncle Leo Berry home to meet the family, Grandma Berry took me around to the back of the house.” Her finger traced their path heading for their private meeting.

I tried to figure what this unusual confidential meeting could have meant. Grandma Berry had graduated from eighth grade, as far as she could go at the time in their small community, and married Grandpa Berry at sixteen. Aunt Ruth had one year of college behind her and was marrying soon after her nineteenth birthday. Would Grandma Berry question her age? As young as it seems now, neither was unusual for their time.

Aunt Ruth continued the story she wanted me to know. “When we got to the back of the house by ourselves, Grandma Berry told me she hoped my Berry would be as good as her Berry.” She ended her story with a rather smug smile. I hadn’t known Grandpa Berry who died before I was born, but I have known Uncle Leo for the almost seventy years they have been married. Aunt Ruth, now the age that I remembered Grandma Berry, knew I would see that her Berry had met the standard.